BP accuses oil spill plaintiffs' lawyer of 'fraud'

BP has accused the US lawyer that led legal action against the company in regards to their compensation payouts for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill of fraud. The energy company has alleged that Mikal Watts, lawyer and prominent Democratic political figure in Texas, claimed compensation for tens of thousands of claimants who turned out not to be real people.

In filings to the US District Court in New Orleans, which has been hearing the case concerning the disastrous oil spill, BP claimed that Mr Watts had misrepresented the number of actual claimants that were being represented in an attempt to get more money put into the settlement accounts. 

According to BP, by creating more fictional claimants, Mr Watts also hoped to increase his chances of being granted a seat on the steering committee of lawyers that are representing plaintiffs affected by the 2010 oil spill. 

Mr Watts' lawyer has said that he is completely innocent of the fraud that BP is accusing him of. In a statement the lawyer said that his client did not defraud BP and that the accusations lodged against him are "unfair and unwarranted". 

BP, which has been fighting the granting of compensation to claimants in court, claims that it based the $2.3 billion (£1.3 billion) compensation package that was put into a special program upon the number of clients that was supplied by Mr Watts. 

It said that as many of the claimants are not actual people that it should be able to stop payouts and reclaim some of the compensation that has already been assigned. BP said in filings that over 40,000 deckhands that Mr Watts claims as clients made up almost 80 per cent of the people that were projected to have filed claims under the compensation program.

BP has said that it is fighting the compensation claims through the court in an attempt to stop payouts that are unjustified and will cost the company billions of dollars. 

The plaintiffs' steering committee has now filed a motion with the court that accuses BP of attempting to mislead the court in order to stop the payments of claims.